The Greasy Spoon

Vegetarian Seduction

 

An Apple a Day...

 

Lovely graphics from the William Tell Apple Co. of North Carolina. 1940's. As it's Burns Night this evening, I'm am also featuring one of my early posts on Haggis at the top of the page.

Restaurants in Art

 

 

The New Yorker

 

I've been a massive fan of the iconic New Yorker covers since as long as I can remember. The dry, urbane humour of the magazine's cartoon art is marvellous, too. This one's "Turkey Dinner" by Wayne Thiebaud, published tomorrow (November 21st, 2011).  

The style reminds me of David Hockney's 1978 menu cover for the Ma Maison restaurant:

 

 

Hockney also designed the menu covers for Odin's, Langan's Brasserie and the Neal Street Restaurant. I love his menu design for the Salts Diner:

 

 

The Penguin Great Food Series

 

 

 

"In this memoir-turned-cookbook, Alice B. Toklas describes her life with partner Gertrude Stein and their famed Paris salon, which entertained the great avant-garde and literary figures of their day. With dry wit and characteristic understatement Toklas ponders the ethics of killing a carp in her kitchen before stuffing it with chestnuts, decorating a fish to amuse Picasso at lunch and travelling across France during the First World War in an old delivery truck..."

 

Here's Alice B. Toklas's "Murder in the Kitchen" from the new Penguin Great Food Series, the cover designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Despite the threat from the sinister Kindle, I happen to think that this country is enjoying a "golden age of book design", and I often unashamedly buy new books as much for the design of their dust-jackets or typography, as for their contents. The pleasure book-collecting has given me over the last few years has been immense, and you'll find that paperbacks such as these are not only eminently collectable, but also affordable too.

 

But I have a major quibble- and Penguin Books, I hope you're reading. Why-oh-why did you decide to issue this potentially marvellous series in abridged form? They're slim little critters, priced at seven golden nuggs a piece- and remind me of those freebie books you're given now and again with "The Times" or "The Daily Telegraph". I loved Colonel Wyvern's "Notes from Madras", and am now desperate to read more of it. A slim 78 or so pages ain't enough! Is this a form of dumbing down?  Do Penguin think that buyers are incapable of reading the complete book?

Chefs in Art

 

 

Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) "The chef of l’Hotel Chatham", shown at the Royal Academy in 1921.

 

 

Rex Whistler (1905-1944) "The Master Cook", Sergeant Isaacs of the Welsh Guards, 1940 or 1941.

 

 

David Hockney (bn. 1937) "Peter Langan in his kitchen at Odin's", ink on paper, 1969, sold at Christie's for £19,120 (inc. buyer's premium) in 2004.

 

 

Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) "The Pastry Chef", 1927.

 

 

Francis Edwin Hodge (1883-1949) "The Arts Club's Woman Chef", 1935, The Arts Club, London.

Collecting Rare and Vintage Cookery Books

 

 

I've just been sorting out my collection of books on food and wine. I never intentionally set out to collect this sort of thing; but being a second-hand bookshop junkie, have, over the years, amassed a wide assortment of interesting old books on all sorts of different subjects. Above is a first edition of Michael Smith's Fine English Cookery, published in 1973. And how things have changed!  Michael Smith, for example, tells us how to make a traditional kedgeree using tinned salmon. And that's what's interesting about these fascinating old books. Who today would make Bon Viveur's blue-dyed egg canapes, with anchovy garnish, and lover-ly piped mashed potato?

 

 

 

 

The internet has had a beneficial knock-on effect on the price of some of these books, and it's now easy to get online, and discover just how much that old dog-eared copy might actually be worth. Take Floyd's Food, for example. I've got a slightly grubby copy of it, much used over the years, and stained with the shipwreck of time. But it's rather valuable. This was one of the very early Keith Floyd books, published in a tiny print run by a local Bristol publisher just before "Floyd on France" made him famous. For Floyd "completists", that's the hard one to track down. The first edition of Marco Pierre White's White Heat is another sought after title.

 

I'm currently looking out for cookery books published in the pre-war era. They're the sort of thing which you used to be able to find relatively easily, but now are becoming increasingly scarce. Books from the 60's and 70's are still available- and could be a good area for starting a collection. They're also fun- and often have great graphics. One of these is The Bachelor Chef. Written by the elusive "Simon Tiffany", and published by Arlington Books of St James's in 1965, it's full of dodgy recipes involving cans of this, and cans of that; a self-help manual for wannabe playboys, and international men of mystery. Lots of hilariously kitsch drawings too, in the manner of the late Stephen Ward.

 

 

Absinthe

 

 

As I'm in a rather decadant, fin de siecle sort of mood, I've decided this morning to write about absinthe. Recently, I asked a friend if they would like a glass of "the green fairy". My generous offer was rejected with a look of horror, fear, and pity. Yes, absinthe still has a more than sinister reputation, and most people out there are vaguely aware that the stuff used to be illegal.

What exactly is absinthe? Absinthe is a distilled, anise-flavored spirit derived from herbs including the flowers and leaves of the medicinal plant Artemisia absinthium, also called Grand Wormwood or Absinthe Wormwood. The wormwood contains small quantities of thujone. It's also highly alchoholic.

The stuff I drink, La Fee, is a staggering 68% proof (that's almost double the strength of Gordon's Gin)- and some brands are even stronger. But there are so many half truths in the absinthe legend. You don't drink the absinthe neat, you dilute it with water; and this involves a curious ritual. Ideally you need a proper absinthe glass, which has a small reservoir at the bottom. Into the glass goes the neat absinthe. Next, you place the pierced absinthe spoon over the top of the glass, on to which goes a lump of sugar. Iced water is poured over the sugar, through the spoon, and down into the glass. The water turns the absinthe opaque (this is called the "louche"), and the flavours, herbals, and  aromatics are released.

 

 

 

Absinthe was originally invented in Switzerland, but became hugely popular in France, especially at the end of the nineteenth century. During the 1880's and 1890's the wine trade suffered badly, and absinthe drinking became widespread, especially amongst Parisian artists, intellectuals and the Bohemian set. So widespread in fact, that it became a social problem; but more from the amount of absinthe consumed, than the scientific properties of the drink itself. After a series of rather grisly murders (blamed on absinthe), the drink was banned by the French government in 1915, and then by other countries around the world, apart from Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal.

 

It's still quasi-illegal in the United States, because of the thujone content, which can supposedly give you hallucinations if taken in high quantities. But then so can oil of bergamot (used to flavour Earl Grey tea)! Modern absinthes have significantly small, and I stress, non-harmful levels of thujone. Absinthe is safe. Trust me! So there it is. The story of absinthe. I had a glass last night, and it was good. Extremely good. And less bitter than you would think, helped along by the iced water and the sugar cube. They say it leaves you with a clear head, and helps to concentrate your thinking. And I think it does, as I leapt out of bed this morning full of joie de vivre. Allez l'absinthe!